October 17, 2011

I've already blogged a few times about the report of the Center for Equal Opportunity — here, here, and here — but what happened today was a hearing at the state Capitol before the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. Clegg was invited to explain the Center's report, which accused the University of Wisconsin undergrad program and law school of violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution through our use of race as a factor in the admissions process.

Mark Pocan, a Democratic Assemblyman who represents much of Madison, lit into Clegg, as you can see in this clip, shot by Meade. Pocan is saying the report lacks detail on student transfers and academic performance, then yells at Clegg for being "some guy" who has flown in "to pontificate at the importance you brought from the east coast to us." Clegg is a very mild mannered advocate, so the contrast between the 2 men is pretty rich:

"There is overwhelming evidence that the University of Wisconsin in engaging in racial and ethnic discrimination, and it should stop," Clegg told the committee during a tense hearing. "In a country like ours, the only system that will work is one that plays no racial favorites. Anything else is a recipe for disaster — for division, strife and balkanization."

Paul DeLuca Jr., UW-Madison provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, stressed that academic performance remains the key factor in admissions. At the same time, though, the school wants to build a diverse student body.

He pointed out that Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued a 2007 opinion that found the school's admissions approach complied with a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that race can be one of many admission considerations. He also pointed out that only 14 percent of UW-Madison students are minorities....

Whether the University complies with the standard laid down in the Supreme Court case law is, of course, crucial, but the state legislature has the power to impose a stricter standard on the University (if it thinks that's a good idea). In addition, it's possible that the CEO plans to use this case to get affirmative action back into the Supreme Court with the hope of changing the legal doctrine.

Pocan was completely unprofessional and out of line: fighting and using vicious language instead of attempting to persuade. This is a college administrator? He was more like a out of control Stalinist at a kangaroo court. Even his weird attempt to paint Clegg as an Easterner was just awful, and then he raised the spectre of him as alawyer! None of it added up. Was Clegg a clevr lawyer, an East Coast sophisticate, or was he a bumpkin? Pocan tried to characterize him in two contradictory ways, and then tried to shout him down. A very poor showing. Nice shooting from Meade!

14% minority is pretty small potatoes but what is the minority percentage of Wisconsin, and what percentage of the 14% are not considered qualified?

This is another example of the states' rights issues versus the rights of individuals on the one hand, and the federal government's interest on the other. These have always been issues.

Is Pocan a native Wisconsonian (if that's what they are called)? Is Clegg from Virginia? What kind of degree does Pocan possess?

Pocan's campaigning for Tammy Baldwin's seat so he's going to up his profile as much as possible.

He's a liberal gay man so he will win the election simply on those grounds, just as Baldwin won her initial election and keeps being re-elected because she's a liberal lesbian...she hasn't actually accomplished anything in Congress but being a rubber stamp for her party.

But that's all you need for the majority of Dane County voters to vote for you.

I didn't like that. The fellow studies certain statistics, obviously relevant and important ones, and the other one lashes into him because there are ones he likes better? Does he think we aren't going to understand that it's always possible to find other variables that aren't completely accounted for? Go ahead, convince us that those statistics represent the problem very well, and the other guy's don't. His use of insults instead of evidence was repulsive.

"I think Bull Connors had some trouble with those damn agitators, tool. Maybe Pocan could read up on Bull's methods and teach those agitators a lesson!"

That's what Meade was saying in the car when he picked me up after class. It was just like the old southern segregationists saying we don't need you northerners coming down here telling us how to run our state.

A higher grade than he actually deserves. So perhaps we're watching grade inflation?

Meanwhile, if they don't know what to do with their university system ... it is CHEWING UP CASH!

Start with Stout. Fire ALL of those "parking attendant" administrators. Heck, if you really want to see the university make money. Put in parking meters. And, the closer to the campus, during 9 to 5 ... pay a dollar or two an hour!

You'd see the professors starting to walk like nobody's business!

Win-win.

Did Clegg think he didn't open up a can of worms?

Just getting into college ... means nothing! Staying in. And, gaining enough credits to graduate is NOT even distributed around.

Mark Pocan is the quintessential Madisonian Leftist. He's like that all the time.

In Madison, you're voting for one of 2 liberals when you vote, so ... what do you want us to do?

Voting for the lesser of 2 liberals only prolongs the problem. Vote for the most irresponsible hard core liberal in the hopes that city finances will implode sooner. The best one can hope for Madison is that it serves as a good example for failure.

ignatzk said...Mark Pocan is the quintessential Madisonian Leftist. He's like that all the time.

In Madison, you're voting for one of 2 liberals when you vote, so ... what do you want us to do?

Voting for the lesser of 2 liberals only prolongs the problem. Vote for the most irresponsible hard core liberal in the hopes that city finances will implode sooner. The best one can hope for Madison is that it serves as a good example for failure.

10/17/11 9:30 PM

Cut the Meadehouse some slack. Its one thing watching a cautionary tale its another thing to live one.

It's simply a matter of living in a very liberal city. The representatives chosen here are going to be liberals. I'm not calling them 2 evils. I'm saying they are in the ideological range that I expect, and I will pick the one I think is better. I believe in voting, and I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about it. I'm not being forced to live here. It is what it is.

I can understand Pocan's wanting to confront Clegg harshly. This ain't the minor leagues. He's confronting Clegg's arguments head-on, challenging him on the evidence, asking for specific citations, begging for page numbers when Clegg hems and haws. Pocan mildly suggests that Clegg might not be an expert on Wisconsin...

...and I'm spent. That's as much as I can channel. Help me out here, lefties! I gotta go shower.

Partly because I don't fully grasp it myself, Clegg should have asked Pocan to explain exactly how data on student transfers and academic performance (after freshman/1L admission?) would affect the report's results.

I got the feeling Pocan was fed his comments, and simply was posturing with his No. 2.

Roger Clegg noted essentially in his book, "Diversity: The Invention of a Concept" that there is no empirical evidence to support the concept that an individual's biological make-up as determined by ancestry contributes to the learning quality experienced in a group setting. On the other hand, the anti-American concept of discrimination against individuals is encouraged.

Author Thomas Wolfe suggested in one of his fictional writings that those students admitted for diversity's sake be indentified as "diversoids." Seems to me that that would shut down the unamerican policy at UW Madison faster than anything.

That was a great clip (except it did not reflect what the witness had to say), because it reflects the utter bias of the questioner. No right thinking person could view that clip and consider the questioner honest, or the least bit interested in either the truth or an honest discussion with the witness. I guess people in Wisconsin are entitled to vote for whomever they want, but it is a sad state of affairs. It is a shame the witness was not a little more quick on his feet, because the questioner was leading with his chin and could easily be exposed as at least biased and closed minded, if not fraudulent.

"Coaster" is a term Madisonians use to describe somebody from one of the coasts. Everybody gots to look down on somebody.

If students in one group are dropping out faster than groups in another group, wouldn't that mean that students in the high drop out group are staying around as long as students in the low drop out group? Retention is the inverse of dropping out.

KenK said..."Why exactly is CEO/Clegg so interested in UW is a fair question IMO. "

Clegg was asked that question by another assemblyman. His answer was that CEO focuses on large public universities because that is where the most information is - information that, by law, has to be made open and free.

Pocan is campaigning no doubt there. [He is running for a Congress seat]. But I would like to hear Clegg's final answer to Pocan's badgering question, if Clegg had one? I hope Meadehouse would post more of the hearing.

This issue has fascinated me since I turned 18. At what point should individuals vote strategically? I voted for Perot in 1992. That was, I think, mostly a philosophical choice: neither Bush nor Clinton seemed serious about the budget deficit at the time (!).

I hate the idea of individual voters having to worry about whether their votes will "matter" if they don't vote strategically. Isn't voting based on the premise of collective wisdom? People should vote their consciences.

I voted for Obama because I thought he was better than McCain. I was wrong, but I thought I was right at the time. I don't want to play games with my votes; my votes are too small and too serious for me personally to pretend otherwise.

I hate to break this to you but whether Supreme Court standards are adhered to is not crucial in the least. Just because those standards allow you to act indecently and make fools of yourselves by considering race as an admissions criteria doesn't mean you are required to do so. You can always do the right thing and omit such considerations entirely.

To the extent the Supreme Court allows racists in positions of authority to act in this manner the court loses its legitimacy. Luckily, Sandra Day O'Connor said that in a couple of decades there will be some sort of harmonic inversion of morality and such actions will be illegal once again. Judges say the darndest things when they are rationalizing their policy decisions.

Racial or cultural diversity is no more an excuse for rewarding certain groups than racial and cultural purity was for rewarding others. The people who practice either are equally guilty and morally repellant. There is no place for such people in a civilized society.

I am not even sure why universities have admissions offices as gatekeepers. If someone wants the service I offer and is willing and able to pay then I provide the service. In this case if the student is unable to keep up then the financial incentive is there for them to move to a service better matching their abilities. You scale your business up or down to match the demand.

It should be up to the customer to determine if your service is appropriate. It is not for the university to determine who its customers are. That inverts the power structure and causes abuses like we see here.

If a restaurant excluded or included customers based on their race they would rightfully be shut down. What makes universities think they are any different? How did we come to have our academic institutions held to a lower standard than our fast food restaurants?

Didn't you read the comments here about Pocan? This is dwarf tossing at its finest.

"Go ahead, convince us that those statistics represent the problem very well, and the other guy's don't."

He's not talking to us. He's talking to "progressives" - a group that would watch this same video and ohh and ahh together and build and foster the group meme of his obvious complete discrediting of Clegg. His words and points and argument are unimportant - what counts is that a bunch of progressives can all sit together and watch this and build up a good feeling of group superiority. That's how you win progressive votes.

- - - -

Really, though, you do have to concede his point - don't you just HATE IT when out-of-staters pile in to interfere with your local issues?

Take the Texas solution: allocate a certain number of seats at UW-Madison to the top graduates of each high school, proportionately, of course. If a high school has 30% Black students, but just 3 Black females among the top 20 students, and no Black males, then parents can sort that out with the local high school. If an all-Black high school sends 10 students to UW-Madison, and they are all home for keeps at Christmas time, then the parents can deal with the local high school. Of course, the remaining seats will be left available to in-state high school students based on merit, and out-of-state high school students based on ability to pay.

Or are we discussing how the Assemblyman was so rude? I thought only people from New York were that rude. Or Chicago.

Luckily, Sandra Day O'Connor said that in a couple of decades there will be some sort of harmonic inversion of morality and such actions will be illegal once again. Judges say the darndest things when they are rationalizing their policy decisions.

It is my considered opinion that this dicta was an admission by the Court that their sloppy, inconsistent opinions fucked the whole issue all to hell. The Court reasoned that in a couple decades, people can point to this dicta and say that the window for affirmative action has closed, thereby putting an end to the Court's messy and poorly conceived line of affirmative action cases.

So now conservatives are in favor of diversity and affirmative action?! Or do conservatives change their stance on issues if a liberal is questioning someone in a rude manner? Since when do commenters here have their delicate sensibilities rattled , especially when Pocan is essentially agreeing with a conservative stance on diversity expectations in colleges.

In all fairness to Ann, imagine if you as a conservative go live in Berkeley, CA. What are your choices for elections? I wouldn't want to live in an extremely redneck area either, so I pick a purplish district. That way I get super-climate, trendy activities and a milquetoast Republican.

Admit the best students from those who apply and the student body will be a representative cross section of the community as a whole. This is a mathematical inevitability, unless of course the leftards believe there is a shortage of smart black kids in this world. In truth that is exactly what I think those racist punk believe.

Wow. So this is the first time this year that anyone has come to Madison from outside the state for political purposes?! There weren't any people from outside the state pouring in money and bringing manpower into certain demonstrations and recall campaigns? Really?

I would have thought that Dred Scott would have caused thoughtful people to conclude that Supreme Court decisions and morality are not the same. As a law prof, Althouse states that the Supreme Court’s ruling on this issue is crucial. From a purely legal perspective she is probably safe. From a moral perspective she is totally wrong. It’s one of the reasons that the legal profession ranks somewhere below used car salesmen in terms of morality.

george concludes: If a restaurant excluded or included customers based on their race they would rightfully be shut down. What makes universities think they are any different? How did we come to have our academic institutions held to a lower standard than our fast food restaurants?

Assuming that there is indeed some value to students in being part of a diverse student body (except with respect to political orientation), and further that the only way to achieve such diversity is to lower academic admissions standards for persons who have certain sought-after characteristics, don't the benefits of diversity accrue disproportionately to the students who successfully complete the program? And if the diversity admissions are disproportionately unsuccessful, why doesn't that amount to exploitation of the diversity admissions for the benefit of the non-diversity admissions?

So if UW has 14% black students, then they have more than double the percentage of the State as a whole. They also exceed the national percentage by a point or two. When exactly will they have "caught up"? Never, because it's not about opportunity, it's about maintaining racial divisions and continuing a culture of grievance funding, without which half the "Academics" in this country would be out of work.

Paul DeLuca Jr., UW-Madison provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, stressed that academic performance remains the key factor in admissions. At the same time, though, the school wants to build a diverse student body.

"He also pointed out that only 14 percent of UW-Madison students are minorities..."

So I guess they're counting the Indians, Asians, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, Leprechauns, Star People, etc. as part of the "minority" catch-all. So hard to keep up with the current nomenclature for racial divisions in public institutions these days. Anyway, until the state of WI gets up to the national average of 12.6% African-American, they should be boycotted by all decent people.

Maybe poke Madison Man and see what he thinks. I don't have an answer for you.

There are two possibilities: Faculty who don't know how to teach, or students who have no experience learning in a University setting.

I think a more interesting statistic would be: Students who have had parents go to college vs. students who have not had parents go to college. What are the dropout rate differences in those groups? Is there any reason why one of those groups might be disproportionately white or black?

Educational assessment issues down at the Althaus hardware store, goldangit.

Maybe just keep it purely meritocratic (and open to international students) as UCs are now--and thus have it mostly asians and jew with a smattering of whites, hispanics and blacks. Biff n Bunny are a thing of the past, irregardless.

It's simply a matter of living in a very liberal city. The representatives chosen here are going to be liberals. I'm not calling them 2 evils. I'm saying they are in the ideological range that I expect, and I will pick the one I think is better. I believe in voting, and I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about it. I'm not being forced to live here. It is what it is.

Douglas Adams wrote:

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

Looks like Pocan is taking a page from Palin when he talks about the East Coast ignoring the flyover country folks here in Wisconsin. As for Madison being what it is-- one of the most comfortable and desirable cities in the country-- gosh how did all those liberals manage to do that Althouse?